The term “press release” is a whopper of a misnomer. The public communication we call a “press release” hasn’t simply been a message to the media for a long time.
Now, though, the web makes the term virtually meaningless. So many different people and audiences other than the media can access our press releases in real time that calling it a press release is almost a blunder. [If someone's got a better phrase, let me know]
So if reaching many different audiences is now both a given and an objective of our releases, what do we need to know to make the most of the opportunity?
This, in a nutshell, is what we will be talking about on Wednesday at 1 PM ET on the PR University audio conference, “New Ways PR Can Use SEO and Smarter Writing Techniques to Reach Wider Audiences.”
I’ll be moderating and will be joined on the call by:
- Paul Furiga, ABC, President, WordWrite Communications
- Laura Sturaitis, Senior Vice President, Media Services & Product Strategy, Business Wire
- Paul Dyer, eMedia Director, WeissComm Partners, Invigorate Communications
- Greg Jarboe, President & Co-Founder, SEO-PR
We’ll be covering these and other topics:
- SEO Fundamentals: How to conduct preliminary keyword research—plus online tools and new techniques for finding your company or brand’s keyword sweet spot
- Word counts, hyperlinks, headline writing rules and other SEO guidelines for optimizing press release copy without alienating readers
- Using video, audio, photos and multimedia to boost your online footprint
- SMR Update: What a social media news release (SMR) is and how it differs from a traditional press release
- Overcoming the challenges of creating and distributing effective social media news releases
- Online Distribution: How to seed your releases, announcements and ideas in blogs, forums and even Facebook, LinkedIn and beyond
- Measuring your success: new tools for measuring the effectiveness of your press releases
Hope you can join us!
I’m skeptical about the supposedly major damage done to the Domino’s brand by a gross YouTube video a couple of its employees made showing them sneezing on a sandwich and doing other inappropriate food-handling things (you can search for the video online if you want).
Soon after the video hit YouTube and started to make the rounds, Domino’s responded with its own video apology, and they posted apologies on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Still, online communications pundits seem to believe that the company didn’t do enough, fast enough, to combat this incident and that the video and their response had “damaged” the brand.
You know a story like this is peaking when the New York Times weighs in, and so they did, saying,
In just a few days, Domino’s reputation was damaged.
The proof of brand damage? Found online, of course:
The perception of its quality among consumers went from positive to negative since Monday, according to the research firm YouGov, which holds online surveys of about 1,000 consumers every day regarding hundreds of brands.
An online survey? Is that a joke?
Two observations: Domino’s pizza is terrible: cheese and tomato sauce on cardboard. It’s hard to imagine that their brand’s “quality” image was materially harmed by a sophomoric (obviously) online video. And how many of Domino’s core customers are tracking the brand online? I didn’t do any man-on-the-street interviews, but I doubt that the “average” Domino’s customer cares what is being said about the company online.
Even as powerful as the online world can be at times, it’s still only a tiny fraction of the real world. My advice is to keep that in mind, and in perspective.
One thing to understand about Twitter: you can follow someone without their permission, unless they have set their profile so that they have to approve you [which is rarely the case].
This means that you can get someone’s Twitter handle, find them on Twitter and click “follow” and if it doesn’t give you the privacy notice, you’re following them and what they have to say in 140 characters or less.
For instance, check out Anderson Cooper’s Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/andersoncooper — he’s got 6173 followers, but he’s only following 7 people. Because in order to have a relationship on Twitter, the other person has to follow you back.
This is in response to Peter Himler’s otherwise very good post on Twitter, where you can find more links to journos on Twitter that you can follow and maybe have a Twitter relationship with.